Destination's Calling

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Latest Destination's Calling News

Below is our complete Destination's Calling news coverage, including columns and articles pertaining to the band. Some articles listed may be indirectly related, such as side projects of the band members, etc.

Once in awhile, select troubadours of the heavy metal genre burn hot and bright, much like super-massive stars, and die by exploding in spectacular supernovas well before their time. They never quite make it out of the underground into wider fame, but end up touching quite a few projects in their lifetimes and leaving their mark in unique ways. Optimistically continuing with the astronomical metaphor, the stellar winds and supernovae from the explosion seed space with elements for future stars, fittingly paralleling the life and death of these musicians. Few, however, are accomplished audio engineers as well. This week, we commemorate the underground projects of one such engineer and musician, recently deceased: Simon Oberender.

Audio engineers don’t get half as much credit as the musicians they record for making heavy metal sonically live up to the first half of its title, though they’re ultimately responsible for making sure that the music translates to “heavy” on record. Moreover, as time goes by, they’re being asked to perform increasingly difficult tasks, like “give us a 30-part choir, Gregorian chant section, ethnic hand percussion, and a big organ” while also dealing with the traditional metal rhythm section. As an engineer at Sascha Paeth’s famed Gate Studio in Wolfsburg, Germany, Simon tackled the aforementioned tasks and also performed on an impressive amount of projects, including 4 Epica releases, 3 Kamelot releases, 3 Avantasia releases, 2 Edguy releases, Mayan’s debut release, and 2 Rhapsody of Fire releases.

Aside from these main projects, Simon had also worked on other lesser-known projects. The first of the ones we will spotlight this week is his most recent band, Beyond The Bridge.

Beyond The Bridge

Based out of Germany, Beyond The Bridge is a progressive metal band with a bafflingly impressive debut album (reviewed here) centered on a lofty concept summed up in the title, “The Old Man and the Spirit.” The band recently played their third-ever show at the ProgPower USA festival, making their USA debut just two weeks and two nights ago. Not only was Simon double-slinging instruments with the band live, playing two keyboards and electric guitar, but he was also singing in the choir on the album and served as the albums’s mixing and mastering engineer.